A conservative government, mass unemployment, austerity measures, riots, guns, Brixton, bombs being dropped in close proximity to minarets in the middle east. It has been widely remarked that we appear to be reliving the 80’s. That or we're living out prophesies made by The Clash, which were mistaken for commentary when they were incidentally released in the 80’s. However, if we take a step back from 80’s recall (1980’s being by far the most popular era to recall) and the planned remake of classic 80’s action, sci-fi flick Total Recall, a larger pattern emerges. Much like the big crunch theory, wherein the universe will cease to expand and contract back towards its original state, we appear to have reached the end of time itself and are rocketing backwards through history.
Not too long ago, Take That made music history, breaking records and selling out arena tour dates. At the start of the decade in which this happened, the UK joined the US, led by president George Bush in an invasion targeted at stopping Saddam Hussein. The world declared that terrorism had abruptly changed the world forever. This was both the 1990’s and the 2000’s. Suitably, the mirror line falls neatly around the turn of the second millennium.
So we’ve just had 2 decades of the 90’s and now we’re into the 80’s which is fine. Surely we now have a keen map of history to follow in reverse thereby removing all anxiety about future events:
Over in the US a minority group may soon get crucial, nationwide recognition of their civil rights and if online petitions by The Sun newspaper are to be believed, we’ll have public hanging making a return in the UK. This will bring us nicely back to the 1960’s, happily accompanied by Led Zeppelin, which will be even more suitable this time as we rapidly approaching a more prominent era for their non-led name sakes.
If current global trends continue, then an indirectly economic issue will lead the UK and US among others to distrust socialist China and the slashing of social support at home will force the majority of women into roles as full time home makers; bringing us into the 1950’s. As a neat addition, colour blindness brought on by radiation will indirectly bring back black and white film. After that we have some wars and child labour but at least any lingering overpopulation crisis will be resolved by plague epidemics as predicted by the hypothesised oncoming failure of antibiotics.
It’s a flawless and entirely irrefutable theory unless someone manages to pick any decade and find at least three similarities with today to make the claim that it is being relived. Such as the 1930’s when an economic crash brought on by reckless greed led to mass unemployment, extreme right wing rhetoric grew across Europe and a notable musician from the world of rhythm & blues died at the age of 27 from mysterious circumstances surrounding intoxicants. If that’s too vague, I’m talking Robert Johnson. And if you were wondering; yes there were riots in London. Most decades include a riot in London.
How comparable any of these things actually are the modern era are is largely dependant upon how much of the context and scale we ignore and how much we remember to forget that artists have a famously low life expectancy and people do crazy things whenever they have too much or too little money.